by Carrie Quest
Hmm. I guess tonight it is.
“Really?” Warmth spreads through me and I can’t keep the grin off my face. “Three times?”
“Yup.” She takes a long sip of her drink and eyes me over the rim of the glass, waiting.
“We’re kind of…well…” Hmm. How to put this?
Exploring mutual orgasm opportunities?
Tumbling together into a pit of lust?
Drawn to each other’s bodies like magnets?
“Boning?” Piper asks with a smirk.
I cover my face with my hands. Piper knows all my sex secrets, and I usually have no problem relaying any and every dirty detail, but it’s different this time. Because it’s not just sex. It’s my heart.
“Falling,” I finally say. “Together.”
She presses her lips together and strokes Chuckles, silent for a few minutes. Suddenly I’m nervous. It never occurred to me that Piper would have a problem with me and Ben. She’s usually so chill about everything and she’s told me more than once that Ben never seemed to mind her relationship with Adam.
Fuck. What if she tells me she doesn’t want me to see him?
I swallow hard. “Is that okay with you?”
She reaches over and pats my hand. “Of course,” she says. “Just, you know, be careful, okay? Falling sounds serious. Make sure you both have a place to land.”
Chuckles bats at her hand, wanting her to get back to the important business of smoothing his disgusting fur, but for once she ignores him and gives my fingers a squeeze.
“Also make sure you use, like, three condoms,” she says. “Because I’m not ready to be an aunt. And stay off Twitter.”
I shove her away with a laugh. “That is the only sex conversation we will ever have about this relationship.”
She narrows her eyes when I drop the R word, but she doesn’t say anything. I drain my drink and pour another, glad this talk is over.
“Enough about me,” I say. “You’re the one drinking alone on the couch.”
“I wasn’t alone,” she says, gesturing toward Chuckles.
“That’s even sadder,” I say. “What happened? Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad to see you, but don’t you have work tomorrow?”
She rests her head on the back of the couch and closes her eyes. “I switched shifts,” she says. “I couldn’t go in tomorrow.”
“Why?”
I have a pretty good idea. I knew some version of this conversation was coming as soon as Autumn said Piper had been in Adam’s room, but I didn’t think it would require vodka.
At least not this week.
“Is it Adam?”
She nods. “I’ve seen him a few times.”
“I thought you were going to avoid him.”
She picks her head up and gives me a dubious look. “Really?”
“Okay, no. You said you were going to avoid him, but I figured you’d probably give in eventually. Just maybe not this fast.”
She shrugs. “It’s Adam.”
I nod and slump back next to her, waiting for her to be ready to talk. She keeps a closed lid on anything Adam-related and I know how hard it is for her to open this box.
“You’ve never seen him, have you? On a board?”
“Nope.” I’ve never seen Ben either. They’ve competed in Colorado a few times since Piper and I have been friends, but she’s never expressed any interest in going. Once a guy in the dorms had a party in his room to watch the X Games, but Piper refused to go. Her parents still live up in the mountains, and Piper used to board a lot herself when she was younger, but she hasn’t set foot on the slopes since I’ve known her. As soon as she broke up with Adam, she became a no-snow zone.
“He was beautiful,” she said. “He could do anything.”
“And now?”
She sighs and grabs a fresh tissue. “I ran into him in the hall today. It’s the first time I’ve seen him out of bed, and he almost fell down on his way to the elevator.”
She chokes on a sob and clenches her fists. “It’s so fucking unfair, Nat! He had this perfect grace, and now he’s hobbling around the hospital like an old man, and I’m bopping into his room with fucking cookies, like that’s going to make him feel better.”
“I’m sure it did,” I say. “Just knowing you were thinking of him, you know?” I wince, wishing I could come up with something less lame, but Piper doesn’t seem to hear me anyway.
“And fucking Autumn is asking him if he has a ticket to New Zealand, like he’s going to check out of the hospital tomorrow and be back in the half-pipe next week,” she says bitterly. “Bitch.”
No arguments there.
“I want to help him,” she whispers. “But the Adam I knew, he’d never be happy without boarding. It was the only thing he ever wanted to do or cared about. He put it over everything.” The pain in her voice hurts me, because I know what she’s really saying is that Adam chose boarding over her, and that’s a wound she’s never been able to heal.
“Maybe he’s not still the Adam you knew,” I offer. “It’s been a long time.”
“The things he could do… It was like gravity was optional for him, you know? He could fly. And now it’s all been taken away. Who could get over that?”
There’s nothing I can really say to that, so I pull her into a hug and let her cry.
20
Ben
I stay in the shower so long I’m afraid my dick will prune, even though the water’s fucking freezing. Every time I’m about to get out I remember the noise Nat made when I touched her perfect breasts and told her that I wanted my tongue on her. That breathy gasp of surprise and pleasure killed me.
I want to hear it again.
I want it so bad that I keep getting hard, no matter how cold the water is.
I want it enough that I go stand at the bottom of the stairs hours later, long after Nat and Piper are in bed asleep, fighting the urge to sneak into Nat’s squeaky bed and wrap my arms around her. It’s not even that I want to fuck her, though obviously I do. I want more than that, though. I want to hold her and wake up next to her and hear her laugh.
After I hear her gasp again. A few hundred times.
It’s a damn good thing we’re not in the middle of a water shortage. I’d be screwed.
Next morning, I sneak out with Thor for a long run. I’ve been pretty lazy about letting Nat see my knee is getting better, but I don’t want Pipes to catch me and start asking questions. Neither one of us need to have that particular discussion right now, especially after the shitstorm she got caught in yesterday.
Doesn’t take a genius to see it was Adam-related, which means I probably can’t help her much. Fucking elephants.
It also means that I skip going to the hospital today. I can’t handle seeing Adam when Piper’s tear-stained face is this fresh in my mind. Because I don’t know how much I should tell him. Or her. Or anyone.
I’ve never thought of myself as a guy who keeps a lot of secrets, but maybe I’ve just never stayed in one place long enough for all my shit to catch up with me before. The accident is an obvious one, and the biggest, but suddenly it feels like I’m surrounded by all this cloak-and-dagger bullshit, and I constantly have to think about who knows what and what I can say.
Not knowing how honest I can be with my sister about Nat, or Adam, or even my own injuries, is exhausting. I can’t tell her the truth about any of it. Like I can’t tell Adam about that day, or Brody about the real reason I won’t go to Alaska with him.
The only time I’ve felt completely honest in months is last night when I told Nat I was falling with her, and fuck, it felt good to say what I really meant for once.
Thor bounds ahead of me as I warm up with a slow jog to Pearl Street, choosing the same streets Nat and I sprinted down last night and grinning at the memory. I speed up a little when we get to the Boulder Creek Trail, keeping a tight grip on the leash so the crazy puppy in front of me doesn’t get any ideas about duck hunting.
I head up the canyon, watc
hing the morning light hit the rushing water, and nodding at the handful of people I’ve learned to recognize in the last few weeks. Some guys in suits pass me, carrying inner tubes. “Tube to work day!” one of them yells in response to my puzzled look. I stop at a bridge to watch and sure enough, the park is full of fully dressed people hopping on inner tubes and riding the current down toward Pearl Street. Some of them are in costumes—I spot a dragon and a unicorn with a tin foil horn—and some are in their regular office duds. This town is fucking nuts.
Their laughter and screams follow me up the trail when I take off again. I’ve been pushing myself a little more every day, and I’ve got big plans to eventually school that fucker in the tie-dyed running shorts who keeps passing me, but for the most part this is just for fun.
I’m not keeping track of my times or my distances. There’s no plan programmed into that stupid thing I used to wear on my wrist. In fact, I don’t even know where it is.
I’ve spent the last few months feeling lost: no training, no goals, no plans. But this morning is different. For the first time I’m not thinking about how I’ve lost snowboarding.
I’m thinking about what I’ve gained.
A house, a dog, people who recognize me on the trail because I’m out here every day, not because they’ve seen me on YouTube. Meeting Brody for beers, time to read books, actually knowing why the fuck people who don’t care about snowboarding are always yapping about how “winter is coming”.
Natalie.
I’ve even been checking out classes at CU for the fall. I never thought I’d go back to school again after winding up my high school diploma, but it might be kind of cool to figure out what I’m actually interested in when my feet aren’t strapped to a board.
All this stuff adds up to something good. Something I couldn’t have when I was training all the time.
A life.
A future.
Maybe I’m finally growing up.
Or maybe sexual frustration and too much daytime TV are fucking with my head.
I run for a long time, then stop to stretch at the bottom of the canyon, letting Thor lap up some water and paddle in the creek. By the time I get home, loaded up with bagels and coffees for three, Piper’s car is gone. I try not to be psyched that my only sister has left the building, and when that doesn’t work, I at least try not to feel like an asshole about it. Whatever. Asshole or not, it’s impossible to ignore the advantages of being alone in a house with a bed and Natalie Berenson.
She’s sitting at the table when I come in, rumpled and sexy in her little tank top and shorts. Thor scrambles over to see her, his feet slipping all over the floor, and it takes all my self-control not to drop the food on the floor and follow his example.
Especially when she smiles and crooks her finger at me.
The coffees hit the counter hard enough to slosh liquid out the plastic lids and I don’t even know where the bagels end up. Probably in Thor’s stomach. Another missed meal: If the two of us don’t get in bed soon we’re going to starve to death.
“Piper gone?”
“You just missed her.”
We’re grinning at each other like people in a fucking toothpaste commercial, and I’m one second away from grabbing her around the waist and carrying her up the stairs when the door behind me slams open hard enough that I hear the doorknob crunch into the drywall.
Piper Easton, ladies and gentlemen. Drama queen, cockblocker, and enemy to all walls everywhere.
Nat’s up and running past me so fast I don’t even have a chance to cop a feel. One breath of that clean, citrusy scent and she’s gone. I retrieve my coffee before I follow her. Something tells me I’m going to need it.
“I got a fucking flat!” Piper throws herself on the sofa. “There’s a huge-ass nail in my tire. I didn’t even make it three blocks.”
“Did you drive on the rim?”
She shoots me a glare. “Of course not! Dad would sense that shit from Breckenridge and be down here by lunchtime to lecture me. I pulled over.”
“Right.” I gulp down the coffee. “I’ll help you put on the spare and take it to the shop.”
“The nail is in the spare,” she says.
“You’ve been driving back and forth to Denver without a spare?”
She shrugs. “I’ve been busy.”
“Piper—” I start.
She holds up a hand. “Can we skip the lecture and get to the part where you take me to buy a new tire? At least for the moment?”
She flutters her eyelashes at me in the exact same move she used to pull on Mom or Dad when she wanted extra dessert. Or when she ran the car into the garage door. Or when she brought home an evil kitten and asked to keep it.
I’d like to read her the riot act for taking such a stupid risk, but she doesn’t need it right now and it’s not like I should be lecturing anyone on reckless behavior.
So I just close my mouth and nod. “I’ll meet you in the driveway, just let me change.”
Her eyes run up and down my body, taking in my sweaty running clothes and lack of knee brace.
“Were you running on that knee? Are you trying to kill your career?”
Yes, actually.
“I was just taking Thor on a bagel run.” I slide sideways so a chair hides my knee because she’s got her eyes pinned to my leg. “We walked the whole time.”
Nat’s eyes are darting back and forth between us like she’s watching an intense ping-pong game between two lunatics. Her forehead wrinkles when I say Thor and I were only walking, but she doesn’t say anything, even though she knows I’ve been running for weeks.
Hell, she had a pretty solid demonstration of my sprinting ability last night.
The urge to shake my head at her or send her some other sign to keep her mouth shut is overwhelming, but I force myself to keep perfectly still. It isn’t fair to ask her to lie to Piper. I’m not dragging her any further into my stupid bullshit than necessary.
“I’m going to get dressed,” she says after a few seconds, then books up the stairs like Chuckles is after her. Smart girl.
“Have you seen that knee guy yet?” Piper’s leaning forward on the couch, still trying to get a good look at my leg.
“Nope. Haven’t had time.” I try to back away, but she shakes her head at me and pulls her phone out of her pocket.
“Do you at least have an appointment?”
“I’ll call him this week, Pipes. Relax.”
Her eyes narrow. Fuck. Telling my sister to relax is like throwing a snapping turtle at Bruce Banner’s dick: It results in a pissed off and scary-ass creature.
“What is his name?”
“Jesus, Piper. I told you I’d take care of it.”
“What. Is. His. Name?”
We glare at each other for a minute, both of us angry and stubborn as hell. When she doesn’t look away, I smirk at her, because I know it drives her crazy and makes her angry enough to lose her focus. She makes a low sound in her throat.
“Did you growl at me? You’ve been spending too much time with the Mother-Chuckler.”
I don’t want to pick a serious fight with Piper, just get her mad enough to stomp off so she forgets about calling the knee doctor. Because the truth is that I don’t know any knee gurus in Boulder. I never had any intention of calling one.
She stands up and I relax a little, thinking she’s going to head upstairs and bitch about me to Nat, but instead, she smiles sweetly and heads for the front door.
“If you can’t remember the name, I’ll call my boss at the hospital,” she says. “I’m sure she’ll have some suggestions.”
She saunters onto the porch and I stand there, the sound of the slamming door ringing in my ears, not sure if I want to kill her or compliment her on her newfound manipulation skills. I guess the student has become the master.
When I join her out there twenty minutes later, she’s waiting in my car, lounging in the front seat with her feet on the dash and staring at her phone.
> “You’ve got an appointment this afternoon at four o’clock,” she says. Her eyes flicker down to my leg, where I’ve pulled on the useless knee brace. It’s a little torn up—I haven’t seen it for a few days and I guess Thor’s been using it as a chew toy.
She raises her eyebrows but doesn’t comment on the rips. “I’m texting you the address.”
Shit.
I rub my hand through my hair, still damp from the speed shower I took. My phone dings and Piper smirks at me: a perfect imitation of the look I’ve been giving her all these years.
“I’m busy this afternoon,” I say.
“Yeah, I know. Busy saving your career.”
I sigh. “Look, Pipes, I know you mean well and you like to fix everything, but there’s a lot about this that you don’t understand.”
Her feet drop to the floor so fast the car rocks. “I don’t understand any of it, Ben, but I do know that I’m not going to let both of you lose the thing you love best. Adam’s bad enough. I’m not watching you go through this too. Not if I can help make it right. You’re going to the Olympics. I’m going to see you on that podium.”
She holds my eyes a few seconds, then pulls in a big quivery breath and looks away, staring resolutely out the passenger window.
I’m fucked, because I can’t stand to see her cry, and I’m the one person in the world who can understand exactly what she means about Adam.
“Okay.” I reach over and cover her hand with mine. “I’ll go. Four o’clock, right?”
She nods, but she still doesn’t look at me.
“Hey.” I squeeze her hand. “I know I was kind of a sad sack when I got here, but I’m doing okay now, you know? I haven’t even resorted to pulling out the Legos. I’m making plans, thinking about taking some classes. You don’t need to worry about me.”
She finally turns, and her face is a little blotchy, but her eyes are steady.
“Why did you buy this house, Ben?”
“You needed a place to live.”
“I had a place lined up, remember? Mom and Dad were fine with it.”
I snort. “Yeah, because Mom and Dad don’t know the shit that goes on at those frat houses up on the Hill, Piper. And I do.”